Long gone are the days of selling to buy or scraping rounds the coffers to be able to afford an inexperienced player who may or may not have an impact on one, maybe two games during a season.

Big money signings are the here and now but yet, they haven’t been the answer.

As it stands, the Blues sit ninth in the Premier League table, six points above the bottom three, winless in their last seven and with their third manager of the season in charge.

A manager who many fans are hoping is replaced in the summer.

Sam Allardyce has admitted that they are not home and dry yet and that relegation is still certainly a possibility but questions must be asked as to how it got to this point.

The finger pointing and blame game will continue until the end of the season but this campaign should never have gotten to a crisis point where you’re looking at your fourth manager in 12 months and the possibility of again spending upwards of £100 million in the summer to rectify the problems of spending a similar amount only the year previous.

When the Blues splashed big on the likes of Michael Keane, Davy Klaassen, Sandro Ramirez, Wayne Rooney and Gylfi Sigurdsson, the hope was that they’d push on and challenge at the top of the Premier League table.

Yet, they haven’t and there are arguments of blame that could be pointed at one, if not all of them at some point or another during this season.

Only Jordan Pickford, who has found himself collecting the ball out of his net similar to his days at Sunderland, can likely be pointed towards as a successful signing from the summer.

For a club that had hoped to battling for the top four, not the bottom three, that’s simply baffling.

A lack of structure

Whilst the statistics prove that to be true, the Goodison Park faithful have seen what happens when you fail to replace a dominant goalscorer.

Everyone who has attempted to step into the gaping hole left by the Belgian’s departure have tried and tried but ultimately, they aren’t Lukaku and probably never will be.

Only now, with the signing of Cenk Tosun, have the Blues looked to address the need of a forward who can offer them something.

Yet, the Turkish striker is going to need time to adjust which means fans may not see the best of him until the end of the season and at that point, it could be too late for his efforts to mean anything.

Walsh, hailed as the puppet master behind Leicester City’s miraculous title win, has become a target for blame for Blues fans over recent months for the failures in the transfer market and as such, pressure is now on him going forward.

Whether or not, similar to Allardyce, he is possibly let gone or replaced in the summer is a question that certainly needs answering.

Whatever happens, there is a certain requirement to put a more clear structure in place going forward at Goodison Park to eliminate the increasingly growing short-termism at that club.

Failure to address key issues

The signing of Pickford, especially, seemed to have shown a turn around from the Everton of old. They’d addressed a key issue in the side and done it swiftly by signing a top talent.

Yet, that did that not happen all over the pitch.

Lukaku’s sale was not addressed when it should have been, Gareth Barry’s departure left an experienced hole in the squad and the failure to find a back-up for Leighton Baines have all cost the Blues dearly.

Again it comes down to a lack of clarity and structure.

Bar whispers, nobody is certain whether Walsh made the call on signing which players or if it was the previous boss, Ronald Koeman, but the fact of the matter remains, whoever it was made a considerable number of errors.

Errors that the club is paying dearly for now and will do for the near future.

Where do we go from here

Unlike Chelsea, Manchester City or Manchester United, there isn’t a bottomless pit of funds at Goodison Park that can be splashed about from window to window - trying to fix the problems of the one previous.

Moshiri’s net worth is said to be a tick over $2.5 billion and he already has a stadium plan in place that has spiralling costs. If the Bramley-Moore Docks stadium project ever comes to fruition, it’s estimated the Blues will be on the hook for anywhere between £350-550 million.

Add in a few hundred million in transfer fees and club running costs in between now and the projected opening of a new stadium and it may leave you scratching your head.

A new stadium is reliant on the Blues maintaining their Premier League status and Moshiri won’t want to hear statements from his manager that suggest said status is at risk.